(3) Certain people[184] therefore before now discredited and altogether repudiated the book, both examining it chapter by chapter and declaring it unintelligible and inconclusive and that it makes a false statement in its title.[185] For they say it is not John’s, no nor yet a “Revelation,” because of the heavy, thick veil of obscurity which covers it:[186] and not only is the author of this book not one of the Apostles but he is not even one of the saints nor a churchman at all;[187] it is Cerinthus,[188] the founder of the heresy that was called Cerinthian from him, and he desired to attribute his own composition to a name that would carry weight. For the substance of his teaching was this, that Christ’s Kingdom will be on earth, and he dreams that it will be concerned with things after which he himself, being fond of bodily pleasures and very sensual, hankered, such as the satisfying of his belly and lower lusts, that is eating and drinking and marrying and such means as he thought would provide him more decorously with these pleasures, feasts and sacrifices and the slaying of victims. I should not myself venture to reject the book, seeing that many brethren hold it in high esteem, but, reckoning the decision about it to be beyond my powers of mind, I consider the interpreting of its various contents to be recondite and matter for much wonder. For without fully understanding, I yet surmise that some deeper meaning underlies the words, not measuring and judging them by calculations of my own; but giving the preference to faith,[189] I have come to the conclusion that they are too high for me to comprehend, and so I do not reject what I have not taken in, but can only wonder at these visions which I have not even seen (much less understood). Besides this, after examining the book as a whole and showing that it is impossible to understand it in its literal sense, he proceeds— (4) So having completed practically the whole prophecy, the prophet[190] pronounces a blessing on those who keep it and indeed on himself also: for “blessed,” saith he, “is he that observeth the words of the prophecy of this book and I John who saw and heard these things.”[191] That he was called John, therefore, and that the writing is John’s I will not dispute. For I agree that it is the work of some holy and inspired person but I should not readily assent to his being the Apostle, the son of Zebedee, the brother of James, whose is the Gospel entitled “According to John” and the General Epistle.[192] For I conclude that he is not the same (1) from the character of each, (2) from the style of the language and (3) from what may be called the arrangement of the book. For the Evangelist nowhere inserts his name nor yet proclaims himself either in the Gospel or in the Epistle....